Good afternoon. I’d be happy to tell you the entire history of the Dexter District Library, but you may have other things you want to do this afternoon, so I’ll just tell you where we came from and who got us here. And perhaps you’ll recognize among the names some of your friends and relations and you can be proud of them all over again.
Our library began in the 1920’s as a shelf of books in a store on Main Street -- books furnished by the Dexter Woman’s Study Club. In 1928, a U.S. Senator from Dexter -- Royal Copeland -- offered to let the Study Club members establish a library in the front half of the building where he had his local office -- the little building that was built by Judge Dexter as his office and now houses the Cookie Momster Shop.
The names of the members of that Woman’s Study Club will be familiar to some of you today. They were Harriet Beeler, Cora Blakely, Ora Clark, Cornelia Copeland, Julie Gorman, Nellie Harris, Mabel Kearney, Maud Ott, Faith Peatt, Jennie Shankland, Marie Smith, Mary Steinbach, Florence Waggoner, Mary Wall, Elise Weise, Anna Willoughby and Mary Wyman.
The Study Club maintained the Dexter Public Library in Senator Copeland’s building for thirty years with volunteer librarians, including Mary Wyman, Ellen Sorter, Flora Smith and Hannah Schoen. Then the Village took over management of the library and the librarians included Maude VanAken, Alice Ward and in 1961, Kathryn McKillen – our Katie, who was the heart and soul of our library for the next 34 years.
Meanwhile, Bruce Waggoner organized the Friends of the Dexter Public Library to help the village manage the library, which was rapidly outgrowing its space and needed a building of its own. A house at 3123 Baker Road across from the Post Office seemed ideal but there was no money to buy it and the Friends of the Library could raise money but couldn’t buy property.
One of the members of the Friends who was a lawyer looked through Michigan library law and found the District Library Law, which says that any two or more municipalities can join together to form a district library district, which is itself a separate municipality.
So the Dexter School District, the Village, and the townships of Dexter, Scio and Webster created the Dexter District Library District and each of them appointed two residents to form its Board of Trustees and they bought the Baker Road house in 1964 and moved the library into it.
Six years later, Katie McKillen was joined by Bobbi Willoughby and they were the ‘Library Ladies’ for the next 25 years. In fact, the year they were the marshals of the homecoming parade, that’s what it said on the sign on their convertible ‘The Library Ladies’.
We all loved the Baker Road house and through the generosity of local citizens and businesses, we were able to put an addition on the back, but by 1994, we were outgrowing that space and Katie was nearing retirement age, so we needed both a new building and a library director.
There had always been a problem with the financing of the library. The original District Library Law had a provision that made it impossible for us to ask the residents of our district for a millage to support the library and since there were only about three such libraries in the state – ours and a couple in the Upper Peninsula – we were never able to interest the legislature in doing anything about it. But then a wonderful thing happened. Proposal A was passed and one of its provisions was that public school systems could not operate public libraries. That meant there were libraries all over the state, including Ann Arbor’s, that were going to lose their funding. So a new District Library Law was written and it removed the funding restriction and in the fall of 1994, the voters of our district approved by a wide margin a tax of 1/2 mil to support their library.
We interviewed 12 candidates for library director and we knew at once that Paul McCann was the one for us and you all know what a fortunate choice that was! Then our old friend Bruce Waggoner steered us toward the Methodist Church Education Building, which became our present home. During the years since 1964, when the Dexter District Library was established, 48 area residents have served on our Board of Trustees and I’d like to tell you who they were. Many of their names will be familiar to many of you: Carol Bell, Roland Bizer, Helen Bone, Fran Bosel, Marie Braden, Pat Braden, Linda Chapman, Ora Clark, Ed Codd, Pat Cousins, Jack Craven, John Dann, Barbara Davenport, Marty Davis, Mike DeAngelo, Janet Elgas, Lucy Engle, Donna Fisher, Jack Fyfe Sr., Pat Gunz, Mildred Hackney, Clara Huston, David Knisely, Peter Kobrehel, Hal Koch, Frieda Krupp, Jim LaVoie, Starry Leutheuser, Barbara Marr, May Mast, Neil Mast, Ginny McKeachie, Donna Palmer, Rex Perrine, Kay Phillips, Rosemary Quigley,
Mary Rush, Betty Schnebelt, Dorothy Soule, Joan Stahman, Hilda Starkweather, Jane Steinheimer, Harlan Stevens, Mary Jane Trustdorf, Bruce Waggoner, Carol White, Mrs. Erich Walter and Cam Yerian.
How grateful we are to all of them -- and to you for your support through the years and for being here with us on this wonderful day you made possible. Thank you!
Presented by Martha D. Davis,
President of the Dexter District Library Board of Trustees
May 12, 2007
